


Cor glacies

by Aviena



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Angst, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-21
Updated: 2016-03-21
Packaged: 2018-05-28 05:25:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6316318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aviena/pseuds/Aviena
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>My Pip-Boy finally stops ticking as the massive, double-reinforced doors slide shut. The settlers are making themselves at home. A few people are peering nervously at the frosty corpses entombed in the pods. I try my damnedest not to look for Nate’s pod, but I’m having trouble breathing again. Maybe there’s not enough oxygen down here. Maybe I’ve condemned us all to slow, shivering suffocation in a freezer full of dead people. Maybe I’m going to die with Nate after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cor glacies

Day one was meant to be the worst of it. When the shock, the pain and the anger were all at their peak; when the hole in my chest was still bloody and raw. I survived day one.  
  
What doesn’t quite manage to kill you is meant to make you stronger. That’s the prevailing wisdom. That’s the pithy assurance I play on repeat when I’m trying my damnedest to fall asleep. But it’s a lot colder down here than I remember; so cold that my breath condenses the moment it leaves my lungs. It’s oddly comforting, when I stop to think about it. It’s proof I’m still alive. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.  
  
I survived day one, and I can survive this. For a moment, I can almost believe it.  
  
Then the elevator hits the floor, and it’s like my heart was waiting for its cue to lurch. Lurch it does, and hammer and race and stutter, too. It climbs my ribs like a ladder and wraps itself tight around my throat, and I briefly wonder whether it wouldn’t be better to just brave the rad storm. Sure, I’ve got an entire settlement in my care - and sure, we’re too far from anywhere to make it to safety with four limbs and a nose to share between us. But I could make a break for it. Alone. At least rad poisoning won’t suffocate me. It’ll be a slow death. Maybe slow enough to find a doctor.  
  
‘Cause I don’t think I’ll survive this.  
  
“You okay, pal?” Deacon pushes down his sunglasses to peer at me worriedly. “You ate the radroach for lunch, didn’t you? Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”  
  
“Yeah. Radroach.” Deacon knows exactly what’s wrong with me. Doesn’t take a genius. “I’m fine. Totally fine.”  
  
Deacon lies all the time. I can manage it for a few days.  
  
The rest of Sanctuary shuffle in behind us, wide-eyed and pale, but almost vibrating with nervous curiosity. Some of them know my history. Some of them have only heard rumours. There’s no turning back now. Not until the rad storm is passed.  
  
The catwalk rattles as we make our way into the vault. I hold onto the railing for support, but my hand shakes like I’ve got rad poisoning after all. Late stage, like my mother’s bone cancer. Nate drove us across the country to be with her at the end, and he held all my broken pieces together when she finally died.  
  
Fuck. I’m thinking about him already, and we’re not even really through the doors yet.  
  
“I’m going to stay out here.” My voice is squeaky, and the cold metal walls hurl it back at me like a javelin. I’m ignoring the steady clicking coming from my Pip-Boy, but Deacon’s hearing’s unaffected by the thick, freezing air gathering around my shoulders and seeping into my brittle bones.  
  
“No thanks. I go where you go, and chicks don’t dig amputation scars. We’re going further in.” He takes my hand, and I almost flinch away. His palm is hot. He tries to shut the vault door behind us to block some of the rads, but it looks like somebody broke the mechanism. Probably me. It won’t close, and if not for Deacon’s scorching grip on my hand, I would have just taken my chances – but he pulls me onwards.

The Overseer’s office is just as still and silent as I left it – until the settlers file inside, chattering and gawking. The skeleton lying behind the desk still has a hole in its skull. There’s a dead radroach near the door, its shell caved in by something blunt and heavy. I killed it with a security baton. Months ago. I remember the crunch, the squelch, the smell. I remember the way my whole body shook afterwards, with shock and pain and anger. My face was wet. I couldn’t breathe.  
  
“Cheery sort of place,” Deacon mutters.  
  
I shrug, keep my face turned away. I survived day one. Day one was meant to be the worst of it.  
  
My Pip-Boy’s still clicking. I gesture at the Overseer’s terminal, mostly to prove that I am fine. Totally fine. “The cryo chambers can be sealed.”  
  
Deacon looks at me sharply. “We should be okay out here. Relatively okay, I mean. I don’t mind a few rads. My beauty pageant days are behind me, anyway.”  
  
I’m grateful for the out Deacon’s giving me. But now that I’m here, I don’t think I can turn back. Not without seeing him. There can’t be more than twenty feet between us, now. We’re so close that if I close my eyes, I can swear I feel gravity pulling me towards him. The settlers’ chattering fades to almost nothing. Even the warmth of Deacon’s hand seems to dull.  
  
“Hey, sugar.” Deacon only calls me that when he fucks up; when he’s too scared or happy or worried or relaxed to remember that we’re meant to be just pals. This time he’s so worried he forgets to even make it a joke. “You gonna be okay?”  
  
I shrug, keep my face turned away. I still don’t know if I’ll survive this. But the alternative’s not great either.  
  
Deacon mutters something to Sturges, and the mechanic nods. “Alright, listen up!” Sturges hollers. “Ghouls and robots, you’re camping out here. Everyone else, into the cryo chambers!”  
  
One man – no, a boy; barely a teenager – snickers. “You ain’t gonna freeze us, are ya?”  
  
My blood’s already too frigid to run cold. It just solidifies.  
  
Deacon’s shoulders go rigid, and he shoves the kid towards the exit. “Oh look, a smart ass. There’s only room for one smart ass in here, pal. So either shut up, or get out.”  
  
For a moment, it looks like the kid is going to bite back. But then he sees my hand on my pistol, and he heads for the cryo chamber quietly enough.  
  
Deacon squeezes my hand. It barely registers. “You okay?”  
  
“Please stop asking me that.”  
  
We all manage to fit inside the chamber, but it’s a tight squeeze. Codsworth waits by the door to initiate the locking mechanism, but he can’t do it without making one more unwelcome observation.  
  
“I must say, mum, it’s extraordinarily courageous of you to lead the townsfolk down into the very vault you yourself were sealed inside. In fact – oh my. Mum, is that...?”  
  
I want to scream. I want to cry. I want to run for the exit and wash away my goosebumps with a uranium hurricane. “Yes, Codsworth. My husband’s body is just down the corridor.”  
  
“My goodness, mum, I _am_ sorry. How _thoughtless_ of me –“  
  
“Codsworth?”  
  
“Yes, mum?”  
  
“Please close the door.”  
  
My Pip-Boy finally stops ticking as the massive, double-reinforced doors slide shut. The settlers are making themselves at home. A few people are peering nervously at the frosty corpses entombed in the pods. I try my damnedest not to look for Nate’s pod, but I’m having trouble breathing again. Maybe there’s not enough oxygen down here. Maybe I’ve condemned us all to slow, shivering suffocation in a freezer full of dead people. Maybe I’m going to die with Nate after all.

I find an empty corner to crawl into and shrug off my satchel. The wall is cold against my back, but I curl up against it anyway and squeeze my eyes shut. Back when the most stressful things I had to deal with in life were law school exams and overdue mortgage payments, I got through the hard times by imagining my safe place. It was a pretty pedestrian refuge, as imaginary havens go: the park near our house, where the leaves always seemed yellow and the breeze was always gentle.  
  
I can’t do that anymore, because I can’t remember what the park looked like without Yao Guais or ferals.  
  
Eventually I accept that I’m never going to get to sleep. Most of the settlers are luckier than I am. They’re dozing, curled up together on the floor using backpacks for pillows and overcoats for blankets. I’m moving toward Nate’s cryo pod before I’m consciously aware of it, tiptoeing over snoring settlers like I’m doing something shameful. My head’s fuzzy, like I hit the bottle too hard last night. My heart feels swollen and tender, pressed up against my lungs like it’s trying to burst them.  
  
I don’t know if I’ll survive this.  
  
In some ways, I don’t. I look up at him, sealed behind that frosted glass, still as pale and peaceful and perfect as the day I lost him, and the hole in my chest feels emptier than empty. It’s an abyss, and I’m perpetually on the edge of it; rocking back and forth on my tiptoes, waiting for gravity to finally carry me over the edge. I’m teetering there right now, and there’s a rad storm raging beneath me, full of doom and danger and glorious nuclear finality. My face is wet again, and it’s suddenly clear that day one was never going to be the worst of it. Not nearly.  
  
“Hey.” Deacon’s hand is suddenly on my shoulder. I didn’t hear him approaching. His hand’s still hot. Too hot, but I don’t shake it off. It might disrupt my balance, and I’m not sure whether I’m ready for gravity to take me yet.  
  
“Hey, Dee.” My voice isn’t squeaky any more. It’s raspy, like I’ve been screaming. Hell, maybe I have. My head is spinning. I’m looking up at Nate - and _damn it_ , if it wasn’t for the tiny hole in his forehead I could convince myself he was asleep – but my skin is slowly warming under Deacon’s palm. I know exactly what’s happening, but I’m still somehow confused.  
  
“You know I’m here for you, right?”  
  
I nod. My freezing hand moves to close over his. I’m not looking at him – I can’t look away from Nate, even though I want to, even though the abyss is dark and dizzying – but I know that Deacon’s just as torn as I am. I wish he’d stop calling me buddy. I’m not his pal.  
  
“Yeah. You’re always here for me.”  
  
“Yeah.” His voice is raspy too. “Always will be. You wanna talk?”  
  
“Not about this.”

“Fair enough.” He shifts towards me, and that’s all the opening I need to turn the motion into a hug; to rip my eyes away from my husband’s sightless stare and bury my face in Deacon’s shoulder. He goes still like a deer in headlights before awkwardly wrapping an arm around me.  
  
“Tell me a lie,” I plead. Before he can turn it into a joke. Before he can deflect. Before he can call me buddy again. “A long one.”  
  
I don’t think I’ve ever heard Deacon speechless before. It’s a long moment before he replies. “I’m fresh out of lies for the moment.”  
  
“I don’t believe you.”  
  
He lets out a sharp breath. Maybe it’s a chuckle. “Honest to God, it’s the truth. Look me in the eye.”  
  
I do. “We finally found somewhere too dark for your glasses?”  
  
“Miracles do happen.”  
  
“What am I supposed to do?”  
  
Deacon frowns at me for a moment, understandably confused. When he responds, it’s with obvious reluctance. “About your husband?”  
  
I can only nod.  
  
“Haven’t got the foggiest.”  
  
For a second, I hope that _that’s_ the lie. I’m waiting for the _gotcha_ ; the sudden grin; the smug explanation of the truth he’s dangling beyond my reach. But it doesn’t come. He just holds me like he’s trying to keep me together. Like he’s keeping me from imploding.  
  
“Good thing you’ve never gone undercover as a shrink.” I like to think that I sound okay. Pretty close to okay, at any rate. “You kind of suck at this.”  
  
“You ever work out what you’re meant to do, you let me know. Intel like that is valuable.”  
  
“But you’ll be there in the meantime, right?” I just want to hear him say it. I can feel Nate’s dead eyes on the back of my neck. I can still feel the bruises I got from beating uselessly against the cryo pod glass. I know there’s an abyss beneath my feet, and I know there’s a hole in my chest. But next time my nightmares or a rad storm drag me back to Vault 111, I’ll have a better memory to focus on: Deacon’s arms around my waist, his eyes like beacons in the gloom.  
  
He nods. His smile is weak, but I can still feel its warmth. “Damn right I will. You’ll be sick of me before you know it.” He doesn’t call me buddy.  
  
And I start to think that maybe I’ll survive this after all.


End file.
